Turn Again to Life by Hall

It's the first September 11 commemoration that New York Urban center has held at its completed, 16-acre memorial site.

Amid the disorder left on the metropolis by its most recent terror threat -- and the ensuing law response of closed roads, check points, and bag searches -- hundreds of thousands turned to peace and reflection in the ceremonies at the site of the Earth Trade Center attacks.

Over the years, poems and songs take helped the U.Southward. grieve, heal and move past the most difficult of times. At Sun'south ceremony, and in past memorial services for September 11, these pieces of deeply meaningful prose took heart stage.

Rudy Giuliani, who was in the final months of mayoralty in New York City when the twin towers were struck, read an excerpt from the King James version of the Bible -- Ecclesiastes 3:1 -- likewise popularized in a vocal adapted by Pete Seeger in 1962, chosen "Turn, Turn Turn,":

To every thing there is a season,
and a fourth dimension to every purpose under the heaven
A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, a time to reap that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a fourth dimension to heal;
a time to break down, and a fourth dimension to build up;
A fourth dimension to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to trip the light fantastic toe;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to assemble stones together;
a fourth dimension to embrace, and a fourth dimension to refrain from embracing;
A fourth dimension to get, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a fourth dimension to bandage away;
A fourth dimension to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to go along silence, and a fourth dimension to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a fourth dimension of state of war, and a time of peace.

"Turn Again to Life" by poet Mary Lee Hall (1843-1927) was read by Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey:

If I should dice and leave yous here a while,
be not like others sore undone,
who keep long vigil by the silent dust.
For my sake plough again to life and grin,
nerving thy centre and trembling hand
to do something to condolement other hearts than thine.

Complete these dear unfinished tasks of mine
and I perchance may therein comfort yous.

The poem is often used at funeral services, and was written by a suffragist and one of the starting time female person attorneys in the U.S.

For the 2002 ceremony, the and then-Poet Laureate of the United states, Billy Collins, read a poem he had written specially for the victims, and the proper noun-reading tradition (which will discontinue after this twelvemonth's ceremony).

Former New York governor George Pataki read an extract from the poem on Lord's day.

"The Names" past Billy Collins (b.1941), written in 2002.

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft pelting stole in, unhelped past any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, every bit it happened,
So Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As aerosol fell through the dark.

Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Xx-6 willows on the banks of a stream.

In the morning time, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew similar the eyes of tears,
And each had a proper name --

Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the mean solar day.

A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see y'all spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this urban center.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner --

Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I come across a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.

Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.

Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the globe and out to sea.

In the evening -- weakening calorie-free, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A adult female by a window puts a match to a candle,

And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --
Vanacore and Wallace,
(permit X stand up, if it tin, for the ones unfound)

And so Young and Ziminsky, the concluding jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One proper name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the pare.

Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.

Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the modest tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat

Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, in that location is barely room on the walls of the heart.

New York City'southward mayor, Michael Bloomberg read an extract from a classic verse form by John Donne (1572-1631):

No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a office of the main;
if a clod be washed abroad by the bounding main, Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were, every bit well as if a estate of thy friend's or of thine own were;
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in flesh,
and therefore never transport to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

And quondam New Jersey senator, Donald DiFrancesco, who was the state'due south 51st governor when the planes hit the towers, read the following unattributed poem:

If tears could bring you back to me,
You lot'd be here past my side,
For God could fill a river full
of all the tears I've cried

If I could have one wish come up true
I'd ask of God in prayer
to allow me accept merely ane more day
to show how much I care.

If beloved could reach the heavens shore
I'd quickly come for y'all,
my heart would build a bridge of beloved
one wide enough for two

Simply this I know
the twenty-four hours volition come
when we will never part,
until that day we meet once more
I'll keep you in my heart

Other touching poems have marked the memorial ceremony over the years.

In 2002, an 11-year-sometime girl from Brooklyn named Brittany Clark read a poem she wrote for her father, Benjamin Keefe Clark, a food service worker.

She has reappeared at memorial services since, but her offset poem was republished by the New York Times:

"This verse form makes me experience like my daddy is speaking to me," she had said. It has been circulated widely every bit a poem past "Bearding" in eastward-mails, but Clark'due south mother says she wrote the poem for her father.

I give y'all this one thought to keep/
I am with you still, I exercise not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glint on the snow.

I am as sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle fall rain.

When you lot awaken in morning hush,
I am the swift uplifting blitz

Of tranquillity birds in circled flying,
I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Practise not think of me every bit gone,
I am with you withal in each new dawn.

In 2003, a immature male child named Peter Negron, whose father Pete had perished in 1 WTC, read a poem by children's author Deborah Chandra, called stars. Come across the entire poem, and read more than well-nigh Negron, who appeared this yr at the memorial, at Yahoo! News.

Contact Jess Wisloski, NYC editor

woodsonantruldis2000.blogspot.com

Source: https://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/turn-thee-again-life-read-september-11-ceremony-142150295.html